Campfire Tales
by Eryndil
Summary: As the company eats supper round the campfire, Bofur tells a shaggy dog story involving tree-climbing, frogs and bad archery. Just a bit of light-hearted nonsense. Now with Ori's story too!
1. Bofur's Story

_Title: Campfire Tales  
>Genre: Humour &amp; Friendship<br>Rating: K  
>SpoilersWarnings: None that I can think of  
>Context: Takes place during the early part of the quest, between the Shire and the trolls<em>

_Disclaimer: All existing copyrights remain the property of their respective owners and I make no claim to them. This story contains elements created by JRR Tolkien which are used here for non-profit-making purposes only. No infringement is intended._

_Summary: Bofur tells a shaggy dog story involving tree-climbing, frogs and bad archery. Just a bit of light-hearted nonsense._

* * *

><p>"Excellent stew, Bombur."<p>

At his brother's words, Kili looked up from his bowl and added his own compliment.

"Yes, it's delicious. I can't imagine how you made enough for the whole company with just two rabbits and a few herbs."

The cook gave him a mysterious smile and continued eating.

From his place next to Bombur, Bofur sent them a slight grimace. "Ah," he murmured, "you might not want to know what else he put in there."

Kili paused with his spoon halfway to his mouth. "What do you mean?"

"Well, he had to add a few more things to make it go round, as you might say."

The two young princes glanced at each other, then Fili stared at Bofur, eyes narrowed in suspicion. "What things?"

"Oh, I couldn't tell you," the older dwarf replied nonchalently. "Family secrets, you know." With that, he gave them an enigmatic wink and sat back, watching them closely.

Kili looked down at his stew, then up at his brother and finally back to Bofur. "Well, Bombur's eating it..."

"You know Bombur, he'd eat anything," Bofur replied. He raised his eyebrows and gazed at them for a long moment, enjoying himself immensely. Eventually, he decided the joke had run its course and broke into a broad grin.

"Don't worry lads, it's perfectly fine," he assured them. "Bombur wouldn't put anything bad into the stew."

Rolling their eyes at him, Fili and Kili returned their attention to their food.

"Not since that incident with the frogs, anyway," Bofur added.

"Frogs?" Ori piped up from beside Kili.

"Aye, frogs."

They all looked towards Bombur, who smiled and nodded in agreement. Somewhere behind him, Bifur was muttering under his breath in Khuzdul. Kili wasn't sure what he was saying, but it sounded like a curse on frogs.

"So, what happened?" The unexpected sound of Bilbo's voice made the three youngest dwarves look round to see that most of the others had gathered behind them and were listening to the conversation. Even Thorin seemed interested in what Bofur had to say.

As for Bofur, he was clearly relishing the opportunity to spin a yarn for the company. "Well..."

"This was many years ago, you understand, when Bombur and I were no older than you two." He nodded towards the young princes. "We were travelling over by the Weather Hills and we decided to do a spot of hunting to catch ourselves some supper. We had an axe and a bow between us."

Bofur gestured towards Kili. "Not a fine bow like yours, of course, just something we'd put together without much skill." He smiled reminiscently. "Turns out we didn't have much skill in using it either."

"Didn't you catch anything?" Ori asked.

"Not with that bow, that's for sure." Bofur chuckled. "First of all, I tried to shoot some rabbits but I kept missing. Then Bombur went after them with the axe but he just scared them away."

"You needed a snare," Nori said with the voice of experience.

Bofur nodded at him. "Aye, that we did, but we were young fools back then."

Kili resisted the temptation to make a comment about how little had changed. He stifled a smile, feeling proud of himself for showing so much restraint.

"Anyway," Bofur continued, "after a while, I got the idea to climb a tree -"

"Why did you do that?" Gloin sounded as perplexed as the rest of them felt. Dwarves weren't really tree-climbing types, unlike those ludicrous elves.

"Ah well..." Bofur looked slightly embarrassed. "I thought that I could aim better from up there. Gain the higher ground, so to speak."

"Actually, that makes sense." Kili nodded at their narrator, who seemed encouraged by this approval from the company's archer.

Lifting one flap of his hat to scratch his head, Bofur continued the story. "So I climbed this big tree as high as I could go. Just as I had stopped climbing, I heard a rustling sound right behind me."

"What was it?" gasped Ori excitedly, causing Dori to shush him none too discreetly.

Bofur ignored the by-play between the brothers and carried on with a small smile. "It was a squirrel." Settling his hat back into place, he looked around his audience.

"Well, I thought to myself that a squirrel would be better than nothing, so I took careful aim at it and..."

"And?" Dwalin asked tersely, clearly irritated by the dramatic pause.

"It ran off, the arrow missed and I fell off the branch," Bofur concluded in a rush.

The rest of the company broke into laughter at this less-than-heroic conclusion. Kili would have sworn that even Thorin looked amused.

"Did you injure yourself?" Ori wondered.

"Nope." Bofur shook his head. "Luckily, I managed to grab hold of another branch on the way down. _Unluckily_, that meant that I was stuck. I couldn't let go or I'd have fallen the rest of the way."

"So what did you do?" Bilbo looked rather nervous at the very thought of being stuck in a tree.

Bofur glanced across at his brother who was giving him what may have been a glare. It was hard to tell in the flickering light of the fire.

"Well..." He coughed slightly. "Bombur was waiting for me under the tree, so I told him to stand there and catch me."

"And did he?" Fili's voice was rippling with suppressed laughter as he anticipated the answer to his question.

Bofur gave him a rueful smile. "Not exactly. He stood there like I told him but he didn't quite catch me."

"What happened?" asked Dori.

Bombur spoke up for the first time since the story had begun. "He fell on top of me," he rumbled in such an indignant tone that the other dwarves began to laugh again.

"Well, at least you had a soft landing," Kili pointed out to Bofur, his eyes glinting with amusement.

"Not really," was the unexpected reply.

Ori looked between the two brothers with some confusion. "Why not?"

"Back in those days, Bombur was naught but skin and bones."

The entire company (with the exception of Bifur and Bofur) turned to stare at the rotund cook with astonishment.

"Skin and bones! Bombur?" Nori expressed the disbelief of the group.

"Aye, our ma used to say that he would waste away if he didn't eat more."

Bifur muttered something to his cousin and Bofur nodded in agreement. "You're right, he did take her advice. That's how he became such a fine figure of a dwarf."

The others gazed at Bombur with thinly disguised envy and little Ori swore to himself that one day he would have such a magnificent belly.

There was a moment of silence before Balin's voice startled them all. "So, where do the frogs come into this story?"

Fourteen pairs of eyes turned back to Bofur and he grinned at his audience. "Ah, I was wondering when you'd remember about that."

"Well, we still had to catch something for our supper so off we went - a bit bruised and battered, but undaunted. Bombur insisted that it was his turn with the bow, but he didn't hit anything... Except my hat."

His brother looked a bit sheepish at that particular anecdote and busied himself with finishing his stew.

"Eventually we found a river nearby," continued Bofur, "and we decided to catch some fish."

Bilbo nodded in approval. He was very partial to a nice piece of fish himself and still felt some regret when he remembered his tasty meal that had been devoured by Dwalin.

"I take it that didn't work either." Fili had a fair idea of where this story was going.

"Would you believe it - there were no fish in that river!"

At this point, several of the dwarves began arguing about whether or not they believed it but they were quickly silenced by a glare from Dwalin.

Oin leaned forward, hearing trumpet pressed firmly to his ear. "So, what did you do?"

"Well, I have to admit, even I was beginning to give up hope by then. I was sitting on the river bank, wondering what to do, when Bombur rushed up to me, all excited."

"I know!" Kili interrupted with a cheeky grin. "He'd found some frogs!"

Bofur raised an eyebrow at the young dwarf. "Who's telling this story - you or me?"

"Oops, sorry," Kili apologised, looking not at all sorry.

Shaking his head at the unwarranted interruption, Bofur continued the tale. "Aye, Bombur had found some frogs. Two of them to be precise, which he had knocked over the head with the ladle."

"Why didn't he use the axe?" Gloin wanted to know.

"You hit a frog with an axe and you just end up with a mess," Balin pointed out drily.

"Anyway..." Bofur said loudly to recapture the attention of his unruly audience. "Since we had nothing else to eat, we decided that we might as well try some frog stew."

Several members of the group pulled faces at the thought and Ori went slightly pale.

"So Bombur put the frogs into the pot while I fetched some water from the river -"

"Just like that?" Nori asked. "You didn't skin them or anything?"

Bofur gave him a steady look. "Have you ever tried to skin a frog?"

"Well, no..."

"Believe me, you don't want to." When Nori attempted to argue further, Bofur held up his hands. "Look, do you want to hear the rest of the story or don't you?"

There was a loud chorus of "yes" from the assembled company, along with a few mutters of "pipe down, Nori". Bofur straightened his hat again, opened his mouth and paused.

"Where was I?"

"Fetching water," Ori helpfully reminded him.

"Ah, that's right. We had set up camp right next to the river so it didn't take long. After I poured the water into the pot, Bombur and I set to work getting the fire started."

"You didn't do that first?"

Bofur looked up at Gloin. "No, like I said before, we were young and made a lot of mistakes."

The dwarves all shared doubtful looks, knowing how unlikely it was that any of their kind would make such an obvious blunder, no matter how young. They said nothing though, not wanting to spoil the story.

"So there we were, trying to get the fire going, when suddenly we heard this noise coming from the cooking pot."

Fili and Kili smirked at each other, wearing identical expressions of anticipatory glee. Ori, on the other hand, appeared to be mystified by this turn of events.

"What was it?"

Bifur leaned towards him with a big grin. "Well, my lad, it sounded a bit like..." He screwed up his face and did a passable impression of a frog call.

Ori's eyes opened wide and his mouth quickly followed suit. "It was the frogs!"

"That's right. Bombur had only stunned them when he hit them with the ladle. They woke up in our cooking pot and they were none to keen to become stew."

There were chuckles from his audience but it was obvious that the story was not yet over.

"So, what did you do?" Balin prompted the narrator with a twinkle in his eyes.

"Ah well, Bombur and I leapt up as fast as we could, but we weren't quick enough..."

With a expression of exaggerated shock, he dramatically announced, "before we knew it, those frogs had jumped out of the pot and – SPLASH! - straight into the river. All we could do was watch as our supper floated downstream."

He shook his head and concluded in a tone of great dismay. "And I swear those frogs were waving to us as they went."

The company burst into laughter once more and a good few of them thumped Bofur on the back, cheerfully commiserating with him over the loss of his meal. Kili looked around the jovial party and spotted his uncle at the back, chuckling to himself.

A few moments later, Thorin got to his feet and walked through the group to stand next to Bofur.

"Frog stew?" He asked with a knowing smile.

"That's right," Bofur replied, as convincingly as he could.

Leaning down, Thorin clasped his shoulder briefly. "Well, I can only hope that your brother's cooking is not quite as inventive as your tall tales."

Still chuckling, he strode off, leaving Bofur spluttering at his back.

"Tall tales?" he exclaimed, although not loud enough for their noble leader to hear him. "Tall tales... Hah, if that's what he thinks, he'd better not look too closely at tomorrow's stew."

(The End... Or is it?)


	2. Dwarf Ages (note)

A/N: I'm sorry this isn't actually another chapter, but it may come in useful for some of the stories that I will be posting here. There will be more chapters! I plan to write one for each family grouping in the Company but, given how slowly I write, it could take a few years.

So, for the moment, try to imagine that Balin is explaining to Bilbo about dwarf ages...

The matter of dwarf ages is rather confusing and everyone has their own ideas about how they match up with human ages.

Based on what I've read in Tolkien's writings and what fits with the films etc, it doesn't seem possible to make a simple comparison (e.g one human year = 3 dwarf years).

While dwarves certainly age much more slowly than humans, it appears that they go through several stages of growth as follows:

1. Relatively fast growth from birth to age 30 (when they are considered old enough to fight) and 40 (when they reach adult appearance).

2. Slow ageing from 40 until around 240 (at which point they reach old age).

3. Rapid ageing from 240 to 250 (the usual life span of a dwarf, although a few live to 300).

In the absence of any 'official' guidelines, I am using my own reckoning as noted below (dwarf age = rough human age). However, this is just an approximation as the two species are not really comparable.

10 = 5  
>20 = 10<br>30 = 15  
>40 = 18<br>50 = 20  
>100 = 30<br>150 = 40  
>200 = 50<br>240 = 60  
>250 = 70<p> 


	3. Ori's Story

Campfire Tales – Ori's Story

_A/N: I have used movie-canon for the dwarves' respective ages and characteristics. Ori was 16 at the time of his story - by my estimation the human equivalent is around 8 years._

_According to my head canon, Ori, Nori and Dori's parents died when Ori was still very young. This is why Dori is so protective towards his little brother._

* * *

><p>A couple of days later, the company was seated around the fire, enjoying a particularly tasty rabbit stew (at least it tasted like rabbit, although Bofur was still trying to convice them that it was frog). The campsite was well defended, the air was warm and the sky was full of stars – in other words, a perfect evening for telling stories around the campfire.<p>

Swallowing his last mouthful of stew, Bilbo threw caution to the wind and turned towards Bofur with a tentative smile.

"Do you have any more tales for us, Master Dwarf?"

His question attracted the attention of several of their companions who added their very vocal support, hoping for another fanciful yarn. Bofur tilted his head, causing his hat to flap in synchrony, and donned a self-deprecating expression.

"Ah now, lads, I think it must be someone else's turn."

As the other members of the company protested vociferously, Thorin spoke up. "I agree, we've had enough absurd frog stories for now."

"So, whose turn is it?" Ori asked eagerly, his quill pen poised above his notebook as if he was preparing to record every word of the evening's entertainment.

Bofur grinned widely, eyes sparkling with mischief. "How about you?"

The young dwarf gave him a startled look and shook his head mutely, apparently unable to conjure up a reply.

"That's a great idea," Kili called out from his place on the other side of the fire.

Ori blinked at the dark-haired prince in surprise and fiddled with his cuffs. "Oh well, I- I don't know," he said, nervously. "I don't really have any stories to tell."

A few of the other dwarves nodded at his response. They knew that he had lived something of a sheltered life with Dori fussing over him like a mother hen. The Quest was probably the only exciting thing that had ever happened to him.

"What about that time in Bree?" At Nori's unexpected remark, every head swung towards him and then quickly back to the young scribe to see how he would react.

For his part, Ori still looked uncertain and he sent a hesitant glance towards Dori, who had fixed the middle brother with a very disapproving glare.

"I don't think that incident would make a suitable campfire tale," the white-haired dwarf informed them sternly.

Of course, this response further intrigued his fellow company members - especially the two princes, who were keen to hear an unsuitable story - and they called out their encouragement to Ori. The poor young dwarf was clearly confounded by his predicament and he seemed quite undecided until Nori spoke up again.

"Don't worry, you don't have to tell the story" he said with a sympathetic smile that might have been reassuring, were it not for his next words: "I can tell it to 'em."

Ori's eyes widened as he imagined how his brother would relate the incident. "No, no, that's alright," he replied hastily. "I'll do it."

Then, as if suddenly realising what he had let himself in for, he looked round the group and swallowed nervously. "Um," he began gingerly, "this all happened when I was just a dwarfling, nearly 60 years ago. I'm not quite sure how, but Dori got word that Nori was in trouble with a group of men in Bree."

"Slight misunderstanding about some silverware," Nori put in.

Dori scowled at him. "...that found its way into your pocket."

"Anyway," Ori carried on, well accustomed to his brothers' bickering. "They were threatening to put him in jail."

"Or cut his head off," Dori added.

"So we had to go and help him out."

"Normally, I wouldn't take Ori somewhere like that," the oldest brother pointed out. "But he was too young to leave on his own and there was no-one to keep an eye on him."

Ignoring the interruption with the ease of much practice, Ori continued on undiverted. "Luckily there was a group of merchants travelling to Bree, so we joined them for the journey."

Bilbo took his pipe from his mouth to ask, "did you go through the Shire?"

"Yes, we did," the young dwarf told him, "but I didn't see any of it because Dori made me stay in the wagon."

"It was safer there," his oldest brother said firmly.

Nori gave a derisive snort. "Safer from the vicious hobbits?"

His mocking comment earned him a reproving glare from Dori. "When you've got a sixteen-year-old dwarfling in your care, it's better to be safe than sorry."

"Eventually we arrived in Bree," Ori went on doggedly, "and we found the men who were holding Nori."

"Not the worst lodgings I've had to stay in," the middle brother said cheerfully.

Dwalin made a 'harrumph' sound and Bilbo looked round to see an odd expression on the fierce warrior's face. It seemed to be part amusement and part disapproval.

Spotting the hobbit's curiosity, Balin leaned towards him and quietly explained, "Nori has been the...uh, the involuntary guest of a number of incarceration facilities over the years."

Bilbo looked back at the light-fingered dwarf, who sent him an unrepentent grin before conceding, "mind you, I didn't much like the company."

"A very unpleasant band of ruffians." Dori scowled indignantly. "They were completely uncooperative."

"And they had a grudge against dwarves," Nori added.

"I tried to reason with them," his older brother said primly, "but they wouldn't listen. It was obvious that they had no respect for the proper legal process."

Nori shook his head and rolled his eyes. "They were a gang of villains. They didn't give a tinker's cuss about the law."

There was another disdainful noise from Dwalin, followed by some low grumbling that Bilbo couldn't decipher.

Unbothered by the muttering, Nori continued, "they weren't interested in Dori's arguments, so I tried to make a deal with them -"

"You offered to sell Ori to them!"

At Dori's scandalised accusation, all eyes turned to the middle brother, who had the grace to look a bit uncomfortable. "I wouldn't have let 'em take him," he protested gruffly.

"Did they accept the offer?" Kili wanted to know.

"They didn't get the chance," Ori replied in a stoic tone. "Dori was scolding Nori so loudly that you couldn't hear anything that the men said."

He gave his audience a long-suffering look and received a few understanding nods, along with some less sympathetic chuckles.

"They were arguing for quite a long time after that..." He looked over at his brothers who were still exchanging incivilities.

_"You are completely irresponsible!"_

_"At least I was doing something useful."_

_"You call that useful?"_

"...just like that." Ori rolled his eyes at them and continued. "Well, the men got fed up with them and dragged us all into another room and locked the door."

Bofur waved his pipe in the direction of the two older brothers. "And did they stop arguing then?"

"Not for a while," Ori told him. "Then Dori started banging on the door."

Nori snorted. "I don't know what you were thinking of."

"I was trying to attract some attention," Dori informed him reproachfully. "One of the watchmen might have heard."

"That wasn't very likely."

"Well, at least I was -"

"What were _you_ doing, Ori?" Fili interrupted, trying to get back to the story.

The youngest brother looked embarrassed. "Um, I was just standing in the corner feeling a bit scared. I was only a dwarfling after all."

"You were very brave for such a young lad," Dori assured him.

Nori nodded and smiled at Ori. "There wasn't much that you could have done anyway."

Bilbo looked at the three brothers with a contemplative expression. He had noticed how Dori and Nori tended to join together to support young Ori. The hobbit felt that he was beginning to figure out the 'Ri Family' (which was how he referred to them in his head.)

"So there we were," Ori said, leaning forwards to add a sense of drama to his tale. "Locked up in a tiny room with no hope of rescue!"

"How did you get out then?" Gloin asked.

Nori raised one elaborately braided eyebrow at him. "How do you think?"

"Ah!" The dwarves all nodded to each other as if they knew what he meant, while poor Bilbo was left in the dark.

"Um," he said timidly, "I'm not sure I quite understand..."

Bofur sent him a conspiratorial wink. "Ah well, Nori here has certain...skills that would come in handy in that situation."

"Though we prefer _not_ to mention them in polite company," Dori grumbled disapprovingly.

"He picked the lock!" Ori blurted out, much to his oldest brother's disgust.

Nori looked around proudly. "Quick and quiet, like. I had that door open easy as pie and we were out of there before those great oafs knew what was happening."

"And we legged it out of the town as fast as we could," Ori added.

Dori scowled at them both. "We were lucky that they didn't catch up with us. We'd have been done for."

"There was no chance of that." Nori dismissed the possibility with a casual wave of his hand. "You have to admit that my skills got us out of a sticky situation."

"It was you and your criminal tendencies that got us into the situation in the first place!"

With no sign of the bickering coming to an end any time soon, the rest of the company turned their attention back to Ori. The young scribe cast around for a suitably theatrical closing for his story, but had to make do with a diffident smile and a shrug.

"Uh, so that's how we escaped from a band of desperate villains."

Overlooking the rather prosaic conclusion to the tale, the dwarves all cheered loudly and crowded round Ori, congratulating him on his excellent story-telling abilities. Meanwhile, Bilbo sat for a moment with a pensive look on his face, before making his way over to where Gandalf was serenely smoking his pipe.

Contemplating him with keen eyes, the wizard blew out a perfectly formed smoke ring. "How can I help you, Master Baggins?"

"Well, I was wondering why you brought me along to be a burglar when you already have Nori."

Gandalf smiled in an encouraging yet slightly disturbing way. "Nori may be a master lock-picker, but he is not a hobbit. There is a reason why I chose you for this task. You are quieter and stealthier than any dwarf...and the dragon won't know your scent."

"Ah yes," Bilbo said uneasily, "the dragon."

He bit his lip nervously and looked around, only to catch sight of Bofur grinning jovially at him. Hoping to avoid a repeat of the 'furnace with wings' conversation, he nodded politely, thanked Gandalf for his explanation and beat a hasty retreat.

The company had started preparing for the night, laying out bedding and stowing their belongings safely. Oin and Gloin had already taken their places for the first watch. Bilbo took the opportunity to speak to Ori.

"That was a very interesting story you told us," he said by way of congratulations. "It sounds like rather a dangerous business."

"Um..." Ori seemed to be considering this notion almost as if it hadn't occurred to him before. "Yes, I suppose it was."

"Weren't you frightened?"

The young dwarf paused, then answered in a guileless tone. "I was a bit scared but I was with Dori and Nori. I knew that they would look after me."

Bilbo smiled at him and nodded his understanding. For a moment, he wondered what his life would be like if he wasn't an only child.

"It must be nice to have older brothers," he said a bit wistfully.

"Most of the time it is," Ori replied cautiously, "but they can be rather..."

He looked across the campfire at the other two members of the 'Ri family', who were still arguing in loud voices. Rolling his eyes at them, Ori turned back to the hobbit and shrugged expressively.

"Ah...yes," Bilbo said awkwardly. "Do they do that a lot?"

"Only when they're both in the same place at the same time," the dwarf told him with a wry smile.

"I suppose it can be a bit vexing."

Ori nodded and gave a weary sigh. "Oh yes, they can be infuriating." Then he looked at his brothers again and a smile crept onto his face.

"I wouldn't have them any other way."


End file.
